On the kindness of strangers

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Our house in Tertenia consists of perhaps 320 square feet spread over two floors, separated by the narrowest spiral staircase I have ever seen. Everything inside is shiny and new: the oven hadn’t been used before we baked spigola in it on Monday evening. The stove looked like nothing had ever boiled over or even been wiped up before last night, when a rogue pot of rice changed that. Little necessities are missing from the kitchen drawers, like a can-opener and a corkscrew. Our dinner recipe called for white wine, so I wandered out into the town in search of a corkscrew while Ulysse started chopping. Having no luck with my search, I asked the girl at the check-out of a little grocery store if they sold such things. This prompted her to call back to the fellow behind the meat counter: a slim, grey-haired man who somehow managed to look elegant while wearing a butcher’s smock. He said something I didn’t understand and gestured, exited through the back of the store and, after a moment, came in the front door, corkscrew in hand, ready to open a bottle of wine for me.

“Oh…no! Per più tardi,” I said, wanting to open the bottle at home. I asked if he knew where I could buy a corkscrew. He shrugged, handed it to me, and to my protests that I couldn’t take it, just smiled and said, “Un regalo!” as he started back toward the butcher’s counter. A gift.

As a child, I was taught to fear the world and to be very suspicious of strangers, but this sort of thing seems to happen all of the time when you travel. By now, I must have been the recipient of a hundred acts of kindness, generosity, and help for every one act of meanness. Years ago, a pickpocket in Lubumbashi stole an empty sunglass case—a worthless bit of plastic—from the outer pocket of my backpack. But so many others have gone above and beyond to help me find my way, to make me feel welcome in their country, to give me things they felt I needed or would enjoy, including free fruit and vegetables, pens, drinks, desserts, books, a necklace I was trying to barter for in the early days in Kinshasa when my French was very bad, a loaned Christmas tree, this corkscrew… Of course it is naive to blindly trust everyone, but it is equally wrong to cast wide the net of fear and suspicion. Turn off the television, especially the more disaster-loving news stations, and get on a plane. It’s a great antidote.

Back to the apartment: the newness of things makes me feel a vague worry. I realize that this also stems from early teachings: don’t dare put a scratch on a bike, crack the spine of a book, or tear a pair of pants. The pressure to keep new things looking like they’d never been used took away almost all the pleasure of having them in the first place. It was easier not to use them at all. Granted, the adults who told me these things grew up in an era of scarcity, but how many sets of “Sunday” clothes went off to a younger cousin or a thrift store in pristine condition after I outgrew them? And yet we marvel at the dips worn in old stone stairs by the passage of millions of footsteps, the patina of rust on an old door, or the handle of our grandfather’s favourite hammer, molded and polished by so much time in his hand. The journal I write my drafts in is beautiful, but what would be its point if no one wrote in it? I think we do more honour to things by using them for what they were made for, even if that means we change them forever. 

Photo by Karla Hopp